Parliamentary Debate on Prespa Agreement To Last for Four Days

The council of the Greek parliament’s president decided on Monday that debate on the Prespa Agreement will last for four days, beginning on Monday.

The decision articulates that the Agreement will be discussed for two days before the parliament’s Standing Committee for National Defense and Foreign Affairs; the remaining two days’ debates will take place during Parliament’s plenary session.

The first round of debate has already begun in the Standing Committee, starting on Monday morning, and the Plenary Session will open on Wednesday morning, with the final vote being scheduled for Thursday night.

According to the schedule announced, the sessions will begin every day at 10:00 AM local time (08:00 GMT) and will last until 02:00 (00:00 GMT) the following morning.

In related developments, Fofi Gennimata, the President of the center-left Democratic Alliance parliamentary group, has not sent yet a letter to the president of the parliament to inform him that she has expelled Thanassis Theocharopoulos from the party’s parliamentary group. This would trigger a series of changes to the composition of the National Defense and Foreign Affairs Parliamentary Committee.

A similar issue applies to the parliamentary group for the centrist To Potami party, since two of its M.P.’s, Georgios Amyras and Gregorios Psarianos, resigned on Monday morning, declaring that they will now stand as Independent M.P.’s.

The To Potami party thereby lost its status as an official parliamentary group, which will force its remaining three M.P.’s to stand as independent parliamentarians as well.

As it now stands, the Standing Committee includes two independent deputies, Dimitris Kammenos and Spyros Danellis. Theocharopoulos is also a member of the same Committee; until today, he represented the Democratic Alliance.